In the film A League of Their Own, team manager Jimmy Dugan
(played by Tom Hanks) tells an upset right-fielder Evelyn
(played by Bitty Schram), “There's no crying in baseball.” But
how about lying, Tom? Is there lying in baseball?

It has been said that good sport maximizes effort, skill, and
strategy. But what should be included in strategy? Many sports,
and baseball may be the best at it, provide great opportunities
for deception and lying. How has lying as a form of deception
been mastered in the art of baseball strategy? To what extent
should deception be an acceptable part of baseball and are
there forms of deception or lying that are permissible, and other
forms which are illegal to the game or immoral in their practice?
Are plays of deception good strategy or bad sport? This examination of these questions begins by meeting up with Diogenes
and his lantern in the fourth century B.C.E., plunging through the
darkened streets of Athens looking for an honest person.1 Let's
transport him to the twenty-first century to see if he can find an
honest person in the dugouts of Fenway Park, Jacobs Field,
Yankee Stadium, or your local sandlot.

Is honesty an essential part of good sport? If good sport is
simply following the rules of the game, then ideas like honesty,

1 Tradition has it that Diogenes, an ancient Greek Cynic philosopher, traveled
around even in daylight with a lit lantern searching for an honest man.

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